Ezra Furman

Hailing from Chicago, the fiery androgynous folk-punk provocateur Ezra Furman combines a Lennon-esque sneer with raw open-hearted lyrics and flamboyant presentation, positioning her among the era’s most engaging and unpredictable practitioners of art-pop. She surfaced in the late 2000s fronting the Harpoons, delivering three well-received albums before stepping out alone in 2012 via The Year of No Returning; thereafter, subsequent releases appeared under Furman’s name with shifting collaborators billed variously as the Boy-Friends, the Visions, or the Band with No Name. She refined her hallmark mix of bold-faced indie folk and skiffle-kissed punk rock across further acclaimed works, among them the chaotic, doo wop-inspired Perpetual Motion People (2015) and the ambitious trilogy comprising Transangelic Exodus (2018), Twelve Nudes (2019), and All of Us Flames (2022).

While studying at Tufts University, guitarist Jahn Soon, bassist Job Mukkada, and drummer Jordan Kozer assembled the Harpoons in 2006 as Furman’s backing unit and self-recorded Beat, Beat, Beat inside their dorm rooms alongside engineer Dave Kant of Outtake Records. Following a limited self-release and an initial national tour, producer Brian Deck (Modest Mouse, Iron & Wine) recruited the group for studio work, yielding the sincere, awkward, and moving debut Banging Down the Doors, issued by Minty Fresh in August 2007. Despite relentless roadwork, Furman generated enough new songs within a year for the follow-up Ezra Furman & the Harpoons album Inside the Human Body, which arrived in October 2008. Mysterious Power appeared in 2011, after which she issued the eclectic solo set Year of No Returning in 2013.

By 2014 her standing within indie circles, particularly in Britain, had risen enough to secure a deal with London’s Bella Union imprint. Her next solo effort, the acclaimed Perpetual Motion People, surfaced in June 2015. After heavy touring she dissolved the Boy-Friends live band, reforming its members as the Visions. This period of transition extended to her sound on 2018’s Transangelic Exodus, the opening installment of a trilogy that closed with 2022’s All of Us Flames. That darker, more dramatic record gathered songs about synthetically created outlaw angels, those who love or fear them, and those who reject the repressive political climate of the 2010s and risk persecution as a result. After scoring season one of the Netflix series Sex Education, Furman reconvened with yet another configuration, the Band with No Name, to cut a batch of incendiary punk ragers that became Twelve Nudes, released in August 2019. The following year brought Sex Education Original Soundtrack, collecting music from the popular series in which she also made a brief appearance. She returned in 2022 with the vibrant and defiant All of Us Flames, which she characterized as a “first person plural album” addressing the struggles and triumphs of threatened communities.